A World Apart
by seiht
Summary: Snippets and scenes. Overtaker: Ovan knew he was forsaken.
1. Shatterfall

Disclaimer: The World and its characters belong to Cyber Connect 2.

Dedication: For and with the help of my Heavenly Father and resurrected Savior.

Notes: This place is one of those collective stories where the next entry very well may have absolutely nothing to do with the next. The general idea for most of these is to leave the reader wanting to write more himself.

. . .

.:Shatterfall:.

A loud crack echoed through the Arena. The roaring crowd hushed all at once.

Water fell through the ceiling. Almost as one, everyone looked up. Long fissures wound about the ceiling, water squirting through some.

The Arena trembled, and another crack vibrated through the air, shortly followed by several more. Then there was a deafening roar of waterfalls pouring down.

Needless to say, the falling glass and water encouraged several more level headed players to log out. Some pulled the plug, others filed swiftly to the exit. Most people here weren't so stable in mind though, and twice as many were heady from the viral influence.

Atoli shoved her way through the players, purposefully heading the wrong way. A short Tribal woman shoved her back roughly after Atoli's hat tassel clouded out the woman's view. She lost her footing immediately and found herself crouched at a very awkward position. Water surged around her hands and ankles, rapidly rising to her elbow. She bit her lip as someone's boot ground her good hand into the Arena floor. Looking up and around frantically, she spotted a familiar PC. "Kuhn!" The boot lifted and she jerked herself upright. She waved frantically, then went back to pushing through again as an exceptionally tall human PC suddenly stepped in front of her. "Kuhn!" she shouted again.

Could he hear her? It looked more and more doubtful. She could barely even hear herself above all the other players and the roar of the waterfall.

Salvation came then as the deluge became too deep. A hoard of glitches overwhelmed the area; the World was never intended to be swum in. Even the boldest faces could do nothing but log out.

Innis gently wrapped herself around Atoli as the area coding destabilized.


	2. Finality

Disclaimer and notes from first entry also carry on to here.

Notes: I wish I was a more reliable person, and often the only way to change yourself is to do something about it. Sometimes we need people to pick us up. Other times we need an example to mold ourselves after. There are times to submit, and times to dig our heels in.

. . .

.:Finality:.

What did you see at the end? What changed you in the Forest of Pain?

Taihaku had asked about it before. At the time, it hadn't been something he was ready to answer. And if he asked himself now, he'd say he still wasn't ready. Not then, not now, and probably never. But something deep inside him demanded that he speak with the man. Even if it was only just a few words.

Impulsively, he dropped by ICOLO, the simplest way to find the man without mailing. It didn't feel right to mail him for this sort of thing. And Haseo knew that he was better with just talking.

The guild area was silent. A quick look around proved it just as empty. A scan through his friend list revealed that Sirius and Alkaid were indeed online, but apparently training or roaming town. Taihaku had tagged his status to busy.

Haseo tossed his options for a moment, shook his head, then headed to the Sage's room. Sure enough, Taihaku's trim figure stared contemplatively into the starry fields beyond the balcony.

He leaned against the doorpost and lightly called in, "Got a minute?"

The blond PC quickly looked up, nodded his greeting and beckoned him in. "What wind brings you here?"

Haseo stepped in, toed the plush carpet, then met the man's eyes. "He wasn't there this time. The old man." His words came out in the wrong order.

Taihaku gave a subtle nod. "You returned there then. . . You didn't need to."

The oddness suddenly broke, and his tongue worked correctly again. "Eh, it wouldn't've been right not to. I didn't plan it though. Someone I hadn't seen in a long time said she'd be there. Then she wandered in alone. I didn't even get the chance to turn her down."

"Would you have?" Taihaku asked in what Haseo used to think of as an all-knowing neutral tone. Now he realized it was a reflective question, and it sort of asked both parties of the conversation. Answering was optional.

"Hm, probably not." It was a simple and quick answer that didn't take much thinking to resolve. Even before he'd gone in, he'd known it would be different this time around. And it was. He'd been with good company instead of alone, and his mind was clear instead of murky with grief and unfound anger. Those two factors made all the difference in the world.

As it happened, Taihaku was the one who pinned down the real point first. "I asked you before what you saw at the end. The upside-down man and his gift unearthed things about myself that even I didn't know. I expected to be judged, as if by a deity."

"The memories by themselves were more than enough judgment if you ask me," Haseo added flatly.

The older man nodded. "They are heavy. Their weight on my mind has lessened none at all."

The younger man suddenly realized something. "They didn't break you."

Confusion flitted through Taihaku's weary eyes. "A broken man has nothing."

"You still have your mind. My mother often told herself something. That the best part about hitting the bottom is that there's nowhere to go except up."

Taihaku shook his head. "That seems a rather sorrowful outlook on life. Hoping to hit the bottom so that one can pull himself together isn't something I can find solace in."

Haseo briefly scouted the possible routes the conversation could take, then decided the beginning was the only place that made sense. The same illogical pull that had dragged him here in the first place helped his words fall more naturally. He hadn't planned on telling the very story that caused him so many troubles with his family. "I woke up in the hospital a few years ago with no memory. I didn't recognize my family, my name, and hundreds of little things that are just part of being human. Then, the memories the old man showed me. . . They weren't mine." They were Skeith's, not Ryou's.


	3. The Lamentations of Fidchell

Preamble: Weird time travel, medias res, lots of Fidchell dialogue and I heard on the day that I wrote this that if you stop in the middle of a word it's easier to pick up your train of thought next time you sit down and write. It didn't work. At all. In fact, it was rather counter productive since I now had the problem of ending on a dangling sentence that led nowhere 'cause I couldn't I remember what I had in mind at all. Woe.

Disclaimer: The World and its characters belong to Cyber Connect 2.

I give each and every word to God.

. . .

.:The Lamentations of Fidchell:.

"Fidchell has a bit of a different idea than Tarvos, so don't think Pi's report will help here," he cautioned the human.

No matter the timeline, Yata had never been keen on action unless he had all of his ducks in a row, but fear of personal danger could change anyone.

He dropped the Key, its pieces landing in a half circle fence at his back. After a bit of thought, he pulled out Fidchell and Skeith's fragments. Skeith's piece often needed to be tapped first to activate the others. The way of both worlds said that something must first die before it could live. He couldn't force what the humans had dubbed as an Awakening without it.

He hesitated. Things could go wrong. The human factor for one. The second reason was the very same reason he was here doing this in the first place. This World was not his own, but one long past. Who better to ask about a lost future than the Prophet? His own emotions troubled him though. For the life of him, he couldn't solve why he feared the Prophet more than a fortelling.

He set his jaw and willed the fragments together. They snagged in an odd dissonance for a moment, then hummed into sweet harmony. Morganna's music lived inside the Key, inside of him, and that music drew on her Phases. For a moment, the song sealed his own electric signature to Fidchell's, forcefully pulling the Epitaph from his user.

Suddenly, he was pinned to the ground. Fidchell hovered over him.

"Get off me."

Fidchell laid a firm hand on the unwitting captive's chest; the Phase's eyes glittering with menace underneath his mask. "Where thou hast trod, time hath grown still. Where thou hast rooted thyself, memory corrodeth. Dost thine eyes see naught?"

Puzzled, he let himself lay there for a moment unsuccessfully trying to see what the Prophet considered dire enough to intervene over. His ideas were fruitless, and his patience ran out. He briefly tested his strength against the Epitaph's, unsurprised to find himself utterly outmatched. Neither could he rewrite his location.

Yata lingered quietly in the background. Watching as always. Although admittedly, there was very little he could do with Fidchell nearly removing the human's influence for the time being.

Fidchell stared at him, directly into his eyes. As if the AI was looking for something. There was a pondering atmosphere about the Epitaph. Fidchell apparently decided it was time for an interrogation. "What be thy name?"

"Key." He answered immediately and in honesty.

The Prophet's eyes shone through his mask, searching ever deeper into his own. "Skeith. Thou. . . Dost thee believe thyself? Verily thou holdest the Key, not be."

He scowled. "I am not Skeith. I carry part of him in me, much the same as I carry part of you and all of the other Phases."

The Prophet shook his head. "Once, thou surely wert."

He must have messed up pretty terribly with Fidchell's premature Awakening. Maybe he should have used all of the Factors instead of just Skeith's. Confusion and irritation laced his retort, "It's always been that way. Look, I just used his fragment."

Fidchell lanced a free hand through his shoulder. "Mayhap there be something amiss." The Prophet's analysis bored through his senses with no consideration to privacy and peace of mind. It didn't hurt though. It seemed Fidchell didn't wish him any harm.

Fidchell suddenly jerked back and out from his data so abruptly that it made him oddly dizzy. "Thou dost not! Wherefore dost thee? O' wherefore?" The Prophet's voice shuddered with grief. Fidchell raised his head to gaze directly at Yata, suddenly pulling the watchful shadow of a user to the center of attention. "User, Master, I beseech you. I implore your forgiveness. Hither be my brother, and thither be his inequity. Wert he of sound mind, he never would dareth."


	4. The Overtaker

The World and its characters belong to Cyber Connect 2.

This is perhaps the strangest thing I've ever written. The symbolism won my heart over. That means you'll likely be a happier person if you don't think of this as relating to canon.

. . .

.:The Overtaker:.

Anonymity had never occurred to him in his teenaged years. His best friend's insistence was the only reason he hadn't roamed through the original World with his real name.

Now he wondered. A little desire to not be known had grown in him. It could be fun pretending to be someone else. He wasn't up for the attention. Aside from that, he'd never even had a chance to enjoy The World before things got a bit too real.

His younger sister leaped at the idea. The girl encouraged him to pull the act up another notch and truly play as someone he wasn't, even going so far as to help him craft a full personality for his new character.

He figured she got an extra kick out of the game since it meant that she was the only person who really knew that her brother and his player character barely had anything at all in common. Of course, he was still her light hearted big brother in their whispered conversations.

Being the personality game it'd become, they picked something as different as possible from his real self. Tall, mysterious, and solemn. Speaking in a careful manner was awkward, but worth the private laughs they traded. At the end of the day, he couldn't keep his voice level to save his life. Inspired, a bit of tweaking with the voice modifying settings yielded a calm, even tone that neatly covered the way his voice tended to crack with amusement.

And so, Ovan was born and shaped.

His younger sister chose to be herself. Much to his amusement, she really did use her real name. Spelled differently, but still her name nonetheless. Ina became Aina.

He teased her relentlessly about that. It was silly. Cute too. In a way, the name made him proud.

As many siblings tend to do, they made no efforts to hide their relationship. Their interaction was the only honest thing there was about Ovan. He was a lie.

Most days it'd felt wrong keeping the facade. Guilt laced his thoughts and actions. It seemed like he was hiding himself or trying to trick Aura. Except that he was fairly certain she knew. But could she see that those weren't his intentions at all? He couldn't say. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know how to stop.

Now he wondered. Did The World respect honesty? Although his sister remained true, she was rendered just as guilty for Ovan's living deception.

His arm throbbed sharply. A reminder. As long as he carried this burden, he was Ovan. Even outside, in the real world, he struggled to be himself. He was swallowed by his mask. No, he wasn't just consumed. He was replaced.

It was a desperate, frustrating state of being.

If anything could save at least his sister from this shadow he'd become, then it was the Bracelet. He pursued the Key with unhealthy zeal. He needed it back. Just as much as before, he needed it.

Then Aura denied him. The character that was Ovan knew symbolism well. Chased like a kite chased the clouds, he knew he was forsaken.


End file.
